


The Airlock

by emma_ockham



Series: Unrelated Tearful Tales [1]
Category: Battlestar Galactica, Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Angst, Cigarettes, Coping, Depression, Desperation, Doctor/Patient, Ethical Dilemmas, F/M, Gen, Matter of Life and Death, Possible Character Death, Shortages, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Suicide Notes, airlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-20
Updated: 2013-09-20
Packaged: 2017-12-27 04:11:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/974169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emma_ockham/pseuds/emma_ockham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura revisits the airlock Leoben was sent out off to exorcise the chamalla nightmares she has about him, but stumbles upon a scene that does nothing to quiet her mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Airlock

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a Cottle Month of Love, back in the days he was still called Jack.
> 
> I'm afraid I got my space ships mixed up. Please don't let it distract you.
> 
> Many thanks to karihan for her beta comments and her encouragement.

The soft and faltering tic-tac of her heels on _Galactica_ 's cool metal decking echoed dimly from the walls of the deserted corridors. At the crossroads after the stairwell, Laura stopped and squinted in the three weakly lit corridors, trying to find her bearings, trying to draw directions from the muddled memories of the day Leoben had been so unsuccessfully interrogated by Lieutenant Thrace. With a minute shrug, she chose the left passageway. It shouldn't be far now.

 _Leoben_. He had gotten under their collective skins more than any other model, and now that she used chamalla again, he'd even started to creep back into her dreams. 

She knew he was a machine; yet here she was, on a pilgrimage to the site; unsure what it was going to bring her. She did know she was definitely not going to confess her insomnia to Cottle. The cranky veteran would chew her out for not taking care of her body, and throw in a few cantankerous quips about the controversial qualities of chamalla. She was not going to subject herself to that again. She would solve her sleeplessness herself. Laura nodded firmly. 

She would drop in on the doctor, afterwards. Drop in on him again, that was, because when she'd checked in in sickbay half an hour ago, Cottle hadn't been there. Lieutenant Ishay had jittered incoherently about 'a slight delay', fumbling a letter in her hands, oddly on edge, never looking Laura quite in the eye.  
As the medic hadn't volunteered any more details, Laura had left, promising to drop by for her diloxin therapy later. 

She rounded the last corner and staggered to a halt. 

She was not alone. 

In the airlock, in the transparent aluminum aquarium, Major Cottle leaned against the hull. He faced outward, his back towards her, both his hands flat against the outside hatch as if he needed the support to keep standing, as if he wanted to prevent the hull from toppling over and crushing him. 

His white hair nearly disappeared behind his wilting shoulders, but her eyes drifted to the unexpected intimacy of the gray undershirt that stretched taut around his back, ruthlessly exposing the chunky extra masses his body had collected. The hairy white legs beneath his military undershorts were almost bony in comparison.

She blinked - hoping the image would disappear as other chamalla-induced visions had. It didn't, and she found herself staring at her underdressed physician, wondering what she'd stumbled upon. The idea that this, underwear and all, was something sexual for him, made her pause for a split second before she rejected it resolutely. 

But what _was_ he doing? She looked more closely, intrigued despite herself. He seemed to be studying the floor between his feet but the fitful rising and falling of his shirt betrayed the jagged rhythm of his breathing.  
Was he crying?

The thought was disconcerting, almost inconceivable. Cottle was one of the very few people that appeared to be unaffected by the war. His unflappable discourtesy seemed to negate the Cylon threat, dismissing it as irrelevant, and patients drew strength from it. She knew she did. A weeping Cottle was disturbing on several levels. 

If this was his way of coping, of shouting to the Universe, shouldn't she just turn away and pretend she'd never seen him? Privacy was hard enough to come by as it was and Cottle clearly didn't want an audience to this - what ever it was he was doing. Wouldn't she hope to be extended the same courtesy herself?

The hand that had come up to knock the aluminum wall, fell to her side. She would catch him later, in sickbay, and pretend this had never happened.

Something in his heavy breathing, though, something in his hunched stance was so hauntingly spelling distress that she couldn't just turn and leave. So she stood still, half turned, and waited - wondering why exactly she thought she couldn't leave him to this ... ceremony of his.  
Certainly, she hadn't expected anyone to be here, and yes, the picture Cottle made was unsettling, but ... 

Then she saw it. 

What had disturbed her instinctively, even before she saw it consciously, was the hatch between his airlock and her corridor. 

It was sealed shut. Cottle had locked himself inside. 

And now that she knew what to look for, she saw his hand, wavering near the handle that separated him from hard vacuum.

&&&

Laura crossed her arms, bracing herself against her discovery, and stared, her mind jumbling, racing, trying not to feel as if she'd run head first into a solid brick wall.

_WHY?_

Leaving was impossible now. She had to act, to stop this, she had to ... 

In a strained attempt to relax she forced herself to breath again. _How do you stop a man from doing this?_

Unsure what to do, she knew she couldn't risk that he'd act while she considered strategies. So she raised her hand again and knocked. 

Cottle's labored breathing stopped abruptly. 

After a protracted pause, his face slowly turned towards the sound. He stared at her over his shoulder, his hands still locked in place against the outside hull, the lines furrowing his face etched crimson in the pasty skin, his posture entirely uninviting. Something glistened on his cheeks. 

At first he seemed to look straight through her, not allowing the image of her to enter his private world. When he finally saw her, his eyes closed for a long moment, as if he was floored once again in an unequal match he had been losing for a long time. He took a deep, shuddering, breath. 

"I should have known, someone would stick her uninvited nose in this too." 

Her eyes found his; trying to gauge his mind-set, his plans; almost certain that she understood these all too well already. _He has sealed himself in an airlock! What more is there to know?_

He wasn’t the first to do this. Others, civilians and military alike, had decided that there wasn’t enough hope; that Earth was probably a myth; and that there really wasn’t any point in living out this wretched life, lacking the barest of essentials, always on the run, always petrified. After the first wave, immediately after the Attack, the number of suicides had dropped to a steady drizzle, but Laura never had expected Cottle ... 

With all the presidential purposefulness she could muster, she strode to the intercom that connected hall and airlock, and pressed the button. Cottle followed her movements with a jaded frown. 

"You are in an airlock," she told him. She knew the news value of it couldn't be high, but it loomed so large in her mind that it stifled most other thoughts. 

He blinked at her, for once impervious to the inanity of her reaction. He just watched her over his shoulder, unforthcoming, unwilling to turn, and obviously hoping she would leave him to his business.

"We would never have found you." It was hard to keep the accusation out of her voice. 

His nod was almost imperceptible. 

_Oh dear._

She shifted her balance between her feet like a fighter looking for an opening, scuffling for a way to tackle the situation. Then she tapped the transparent hatch with calculated casualness. 

"Why don’t you open this door?" There was a carefully measured trace of President in her tone, and an attitude of straightforward practicality she hoped he would respond to.

Cottle's uncooperative stare now almost resembled his customary one, but through infinitesimal cracks in his unresponsiveness, she thought she could see defeat seeping into his features. Suddenly he was unmistakably older than Bill. This was not the officer, not the surgeon, staring back at her. This was not the unflappable and hardened CMO, this was Jack Cottle; the man. 

She realized she'd not seen much of him before, except maybe that faithful evening she'd been dying in sickbay and he was taking care of her; anticipating her needs so carefully that it had felt as if she was family to him; as if he'd anticipated missing her, and had tried to do all the good possible while he still could. The moment had passed, and she had survived, despite his better judgment. 

Afterwards the major had kept the man inside carefully hidden. He'd made himself invisible again, concealed behind his surgeon's mask and his cranky witticisms. Now, in the face of his death, in the privacy of his final minutes, he had let go of the front; and just as he was in no hurry to cover his body's state of undress, he seemed unconcerned that she could see his soul. 

He turned toward her with a difficult, chary step. For a moment she thought she had managed to reach him. Then she saw his hand moving upward to the handle of the outside hatch. 

Her abdominal muscles flexed into an almost painful knot and her hands flew upwards in a placating gesture. _NO!_ She hadn't known she was shouting until she heard her voice ringing in her ears. She knew he must hear the shrill desperation in her voice too, but he pressed on, purposefully and yet … hesitating.

_Gods, I'm forcing him!_

"You are not going to do that while I am here, Jack!" By the Gods, she had come here to exorcize a nightmare. Now she would add a new chapter to her horrified wake-ups. 

"Not!" she added sharply, realizing with mounting panic that she had nothing but the dubiously piercing power of her voice to keep Cottle from carrying out his plan; his premeditated plan, from the looks of the remote location of the airlock. What would stop him now?

She grasped the straw when she saw it.

With a silent prayer to the Lords of Kobol and an anticipatory deep intake of breath, she stepped to the hatch that separated the airlock from the hallway and pressed the button next to it to open it. _First do no harm_. She hoped it still held any importance for him.

The hatch door swished open with mechanic indifference. Cottle's previously sullen eyes suddenly blazed and his dejected frown expanded into an intimidating snarl. It was as if something snapped inside; his hand found the handle. She braced herself for the cold of vacuum and waited, never taking her eyes off of his. 

Time stopped.

Then a drop of his shoulders made clear he wouldn't do it, he wouldn't open the airlock as long as she was in any danger of being sucked out with him. _First do no harm._

She quietly released her breath and relaxed with a barely hidden shudder, gripping the cold aluminum for balance. She stepped forward, placing a foot inside the airlock to mark her presence. 

"Doctor?" She modulated her voice to a calm coaxing tone honed by a life of political negotiations. Cottle didn't react. He gazed befuddled from the deck between his feet, to her, and to the hatch he had wanted to exit from; an aged and beaten hostage trying to adjust to this abrupt change of his plans.

"You can't just turn and go?" he eventually implored. 

"You gotta be kidding me." 

Queasiness settled back in her stomach. This wasn't over yet. "I'm sorry," she added after a few moments. Best not to antagonize him into action. 

Cottle raised his head just enough to glower at her from under his eyebrows, but his face didn't seem to be able to hold onto his snarl and his shoulders seemed unable to square into just the right who-the-frak-are-you angle. 

She forced her sleep deprived brain to process her options, creating as much distance, as much solid rationality between herself and the man before her. She'd have to take him with her, she realized. Or, if she failed to coax him out of here, she'd have to stay - until the cavalry arrived. _If it ever would_. This section of the ship was all but abandoned. 

Laura rubbed her eyes. This was supposed to be a quiet evening in Bill's quarters. She'd had a couple of foul nights, she arguably had the most taxing job in the fleet, she had a cancer that was prophesied to kill her, and now ... now this. 

"Why don't you come with me, Jack?" She stepped forward, gesturing invitingly at the corridor behind her, silently hoping the uncomplicated approach would work just this once.

For a while he looked straight through her, as if her question had placed her in a different world than the one he occupied. "No," he then grumbled. "No." He stepped backwards, away from her.

"Why?" She meant his refusal as much as his plan to kill himself. 

He looked at her as if she'd asked him to explain the color blue. "Must there be a reason?" 

Her brain struggled to process the question and failed. She waited, hoping it was a rhetorical one, but Cottle looked at her properly now, as if expecting her to address this most fundamental of questions. 

_Must there be a reason to end one's life?_

"In this day and age," he offered when she remained silent, "we need a reason to keep on living, not one to end our misery." 

Laura tried not to flinch, but his words stung, as if she had personally failed him as his President. She took a breath to tell him just how much they -

"Don't come aboard with tales of hope," he forestalled her brusquely, "that is for children, for deckhands and for religious fanatics." She frowned at him, feeling included in several of these categories.

"You are my physician. I need you." She knew she did. Her chances of survival were slim, medically, and if the book of Pythia was any indication there was no hope whatsoever. Jack, nonetheless, had assured her that they'd caught this relapse early and that, this time, they could win. 

"I was your physician," he admitted. "Are," she stressed, but he didn't seem to hear her, too focused on his personal train of thought. Bitterness gradually replaced the anguish in his face. She wondered if it was a good sign.

"I was also your kidnapper," he said. She shrank back, remembering how she'd had to cajole him into handing Hera over to her. "Maybe that was the beginning of the end, the moment I lost my bearings." 

She choked, but before she could voice a protest, he continued. "And that was _before_ I refused women the right to decide for themselves whether they want to be mothers. Before I forced them to resort to knitting needles and soap. Some even manage to lose their babies in that inept and dangerous way. Seven out of ten, though," his voice was thick with revulsion, "are hurried to me; broken bodies in puddles of blood." He shuddered. "Some will never have children again." 

She winced. She hadn't known that. "Why haven't you ...," she started, but he interrupted her. 

"And nowadays ...," there was a shrill crescendo in his tone, the overture to an ominous emphasis she dreaded even before she realized what it would be, "...and nowadays ...I ...torture people for you," his face twisted with repugnance and self-loathing. "... in sickbay!" He stood tall in his anger. "And you, you, ask me why I want to," there was an offhand gesture to the airlock, "end this?" 

Laura sought support from the wall, losing her balance as if he had swatted her physically. "Yes, I am your doctor," her distress didn't stop him, "but you have worn me out! I owe you nothing. Nothing!"  
He turned back to the hatch, dismissing her.  
"Close the door when you leave."

She released a shuddering breath. She didn't know if he'd lashed out in desperation, if he'd retaliated for her obstruction of his plan, or if maybe he was just trying to force her to leave, to give up on him. "You blame me?" she asked. "For this?" Her hands opened as her distress transformed into indignant incredulity. "You claim I did this?"

She supposed she shouldn't anger a person on the verge of suicide, but there was a limit to how much she would allow him to pull her into this. If he was planning to leave her behind with this time bomb of guilt strapped to her equilibrium, he was sadly mistaken. If he thought she'd walk away, he was in for a surprise. She'd seen enough boxing matches with her father to know that there was only one way to deal with an intimidating opponent: hit back. Hard.

Her accusing finger pierced the air, aimed squarely at his chest. "You are a traitor," she informed him hotly. "A traitor and a coward." She had his sudden full attention. "And you will be remembered as one." 

If she thought he had been angry before, it was nothing like this. She stopped herself from backing away from his blazing eyes. "You'll take care of that, I presume?" There was so much contempt in his voice that it seemed to color the air between them.

"I don't have to." Her tone was flat. "You'll do that yourself. When you die, every injury the Cylons inflict will count. The death rate will rise to new heights. Your death gives the Cylons the tactical advantage. Don't tell me you are not aware of that, Major."

"There's Ishay, she will take over."

Laura snorted. "After the example you've set? After the way you have declared her struggle impossible to win? Why would a mere lieutenant prevail where a major thinks it's best to kill himself? You'll set the example throughout the fleet, Major, and you know it. That's why you are both a traitor and a coward." 

Cottle turned towards her, his anger lost, his eyes pleading with her to stop. But the puzzle clicked into place. "That's why you chose this horrible method." Suffocating in icy vacuum would be excruciatingly painful. "You want to keep it unclear that you did it yourself. And," she was sure it was part of it as well, "you want to punish yourself."

If there was a verbal equivalent of thrashing a man who was down on the floor already, Cottle's deflation made clear that she had done just that. 

"There's no other place where I can find peace," he confessed hoarsely. "I have tried. Believe me. I have tried." 

Laura closed her eyes in resignation and as exhaustion crept in she wished they could at least discuss this on a couch somewhere, or in any case in a place where they could sit down. Or have some Ambrosia. She sighed and tried to shrug it off.

"You wouldn't happen to have a cigarette on you?" she asked. 

For a second Cottle looked at her blankly. "Just when you think you've seen it all," he said. "At your feet." 

Laura's eyes followed the line of his finger. Outside the airlock lay prim stack of military clothes, crisply folded, ready for inspection. On top of it a silver lighter, next to a neatly folded handkerchief and a package of cigarettes. _Not wasting irreplaceable supplies?_

"You mind if I ...?" she asked.

Wryness spread over Cottle's face and he straightened somewhat out off his defeated stance. Obviously he remembered her dislike of his smoking as well as she did. "Go ahead."

Laura walked out of the airlock, picked up the package and extracted a cigarette. When she struggled with the lighter, Cottle stepped closer, plucked it from her hand and lit the cigarette for her. 

"Thank you." 

As she sucked, the fire leisurely ate its way through the tobacco. Once the cigarette burned steadily, she handed it to Cottle.

His brows rose and he stared from her to her offering. 

"It won't kill you," she said. 

He frowned in what would have been a benign scolding in other circumstances but took the cigarette she held out to him. 

She retrieved another one for herself. When that one burned, she inhaled deeply, wishing for it to calm her frayed nerves, badly in need for a pause in this awful evening. Smoke filled her lungs; its greasy tang attached itself to her palate; tears prickled in her eyes. When the nicotine reached her brain, instant relaxation washed over her and she closed her eyes, thankful for the reprieve. It had been ages since she last smoked cigarettes. She sighed appreciatively, happy in the realization that Cottle was standing next to her, outside the airlock. For now. She smiled at him.

The world jerked to the left, then back to the right. She tried to blink it back to its usual solidness, but it swirled around her in growing circular movements. She stepped backward, fruitlessly trying to find the solidity of the glass wall. When her hand bumped against it, she attempted unobtrusively to steady herself, trying to continue eye contact with Cottle, and hide the effect the nicotine was having on her. It didn't help that he was surrounded by a haze of blinking blue dots. Sweat ran down her spine.

"Uh-oh," she said. Her voice was small, even in her own ears. 

Cottle's hand was under her elbow, catching her. His voice in full doctor mode demanded to know what the frak she thought she was doing. She wanted to shake him off, but her arms weighed too much and disobeyed. For a moment she caught a glimpse of his blue concerned face, then the muscles in her upper legs gave out and she staggered against him.

Cottle supported her easily and with experienced ease guided her to sit on the hard deck, pushed her knees up and pressed her head forward until her cheek touched the inside of her knee. 

Leoben tumbled out of the airlock into the vacuum of open space. She wondered why he kept doing that; surely once was enough. She closed her eyes as a last resort against the Cylon and let the dizziness wash over her.

&&&

Slowly the deck between her knees formed itself to its familiar shape. She moved her head back, pushing against Cottle’s firm hand. "Enough."

He let go. "You would be doing a whole lot better if you would sleep at night, young lady." 

"Long time since I smoked," she mumbled by way of explanation. 

The twist of his lips dismissed her diagnosis in much the same way as it had dismissed chamalla as a treatment. His hand grabbed her wrist with professional gentleness and felt for her pulse. "Lie down, careful now." Steady hands guided her to her right side.

"I'm okay, don't fuss." But her washed out tiredness was no match for his years of experience in managing unruly patients. 

The metal plating of the hallway was hard against her hip. Her neck made an awkward angle with the deck. When she shifted uncomfortably, he pushed a piece of warm cloth under her head. It smelled of smoke, sweat and mothballs, but it helped. She snuggled it and relaxed.

"No drooling," Cottle said. 

Her eyes flicked open. 

Cottle crouched beside her in his gray underwear. He had given her the neatly folded jacket of his dress uniform as a cushion. "You are a pest," he told her.

"Look who's talking," she murmured sourly, wistfully remembering the missed dinner in Bill's comfortable quarters.

The major slumped from his haunches to the floor of the corridor. His head fell back and he rubbed his eyes. "I suppose you're not going anywhere anytime soon," he said. There still was a splinter of a plea in his voice.

"I can't, Jack." She pushed the thought of Bill's algae soup firmly out of her mind. "You know I can't let you do this." 

She heard him shuffling over the floor until he rested with his back against the outside of the aluminum wall, not far from her head, but outside her line of vision. He smelled of cold cigarettes, disinfectants and old footwear. For the moment she just lay there in the eye of the storm, a brief repose, silently wishing herself to wake up. 

The unforgiving metal plating of the hallway became more solid and cold as the minutes ticked away, and by the time she could no longer deny reality, she raised her head to talk to Cottle once more. 

_There must be a way out of this._

Cottle calmly placed his hand on her hair and guided her back down to her makeshift cushion. "Give it a few minutes," he said. "We do have five minutes." 

She resisted the urge to struggle against the controlling hand, then thought the better of it. "I will," she said, "I will, if you talk to me." She had negotiated with the unionized teachers, surely she could reach an agreement with a solitary suicidal surgeon.

There was a dry snort above her head. "You think you can talk me out of this?" A hint of bitterness and resentment tinged his voice. "You think I didn’t think this through? That this is a whim?" 

She realized she was hoping all of these things. She ignored the grating in her stomach. "Talk to me, Jack. If this is the last conversation we'll ever have, then please talk to me." 

He grunted uncooperatively. The long silence was filled with uneasy shuffling of his feet against the deck as he repositioned himself. There was a deep sigh. Then nothing. She waited him out.

"It's not easy," he ventured eventually.

"I don't expect it to be," she acknowledged slowly. "I don’t expect," she reflected softly, "that explaining your death to Admiral Adama will be easy either." She let that sink in. "So talk to me." 

The silence lasted longer, this time. He didn't even move. 

"Jack?" 

The stub of his cigarette sailed with a leisured curve through the air until it bumped against the corridor wall and slid to the deck. It glowed for a few seconds and then died.

"Have you ever been in an avalanche?" Cottle asked.

"Huh?" Taken aback by the sudden shift in the conversation she turned upwards to look him in the eye, but his heavy hand came to rest on her ear and quietly pushed her head in place. No glances allowed. Maybe he'd started to realize his state of undress. If so, she would take that as a good sign. She kept her head down. "I've seen avalanches on TV," she offered.

&&&

Bill paced his quarters.

It was not unusual for the president to be delayed for dinner. It _was_ unusual, though, that Tory hadn't notified him and given off a new ETA, especially now it took so long. He knew Laura had an appointment in sickbay and most of his pacing was aimed at stopping himself from going there and establishing what had gone so terribly wrong, that alerting him to it had become irrelevant in comparison.

He'd tried to convince himself that _if_ something had gone disastrously wrong, he would have been the first to know, but that argument had lost much of its allure in the last half hour. He cursed, turned in the middle of his quarters and strode to the hatch. He'd be damned if he'd wait any longer.

&&&

"For a while," Cottle hesitated, clearing his throat.

She raised her head at the strangled tone in his voice and turned to her stomach to watch him, straining her neck to see his face. His eyes were brimming with tears. Unable to reach him in another way, she awkwardly patted his socked foot with her free hand. "For a while…," she repeated coaxingly.

"For a while I hoped that the Cylons would blow the _Galactica_ out of the sky. They had every opportunity. But they failed. Adama is a cunning old fox." He softly touched her head, as if reassuring her. "He'll live." 

Thinking of Adama, she wondered if Jack had anyone to share his burden with, a companion like she had found in Bill. Did he have a place where he could let his guard down, a place to refill his energy? Humanity needed their CMO; humanity used him and drained him; and now he wanted out, desperate for rest, for peace.  
It made sense.

"My life," he rumbled, "my life has become a chain of impossible crises. We've run out of supplies; basic things like bandages first. We replaced them with cloth." 

She nodded, remembering it.

"But as soon as it was solved, the next crisis struck. There are more wounded and sick everyday," he said, "and there's less equipment and drugs to give them. There's no hope. This morning we ran out of penicillin." He hesitated, gauging her from under his furry brows with an unexpected hint of compassion. 

She raised her brows at it, but he abruptly closed his mouth. Laura squinted at him, silently willing him to go on, but he looked away. 

"No penicillin?" she prodded. It was such a basic antibiotic. 

"The fact of the matter is," he said gruffly, "we are running out of everything. We replaced food with algae, but there's no easy fix for the lack of medication. Algae make a damn poor basis for penicillin. We are reverting back to medieval practices. Soon modern medicine will no longer be within the reach of humanity. My usefulness has expired. You don't need me any more."

She made a protesting sound. "Your job is not your life."

"But it is," he said. "Just like your job is your life. Only worse."

"Worse? How?" There was a hint of incredulity in her voice.

"These numbers on your white board…"

She stifled the thought he could soon be one of them. "What about them?" 

There was a long pause. 

"I know their names," he said.

&&&

Bill stared down at a distraught Lieutenant Ishay. She was sitting behind Cottle's desk, turning a creased envelope in her hands as if following a quaint ritual. When he coughed, her head came up slowly. Her eyes were puffy; red streaks ran down her white face. She handed him the envelope wordlessly. Bill raised a brow at her lack of protocol, but focused on the letter.

_By the time you read this …_

Bill cursed, his worry over the President abruptly replaced by another one. 

"Where?" he snarled, grabbing Cottle's telephone.

&&&

"We didn't just run out of penicillin," Cottle volunteered.

Laura crossed her arms defensively and waited. 

"Last week I gave you the last of the diloxin." 

Laura's eyes widened. Diloxin was supposed to keep her alive. _He had said so._ Her hand ran through her hair. This morning even more had stayed behind on her cushion. She tried to shake off the scrunch of dread, the sudden focus on the most personal of threats. The sinking certainty that she'd just been given her death sentence remained. _No diloxin._ No hope.

_How much time do I have?_

"When were you gonna tell me this?" Indignant.

He eyed her impotently, before averting his eyes, and she realized she'd come by for her diloxin treatment an hour ago. _His timing!_

He shrugged mutely in response to her disbelieving stare. Tears had formed dark stains on his undershirt where it stretched over his protruding belly. _The camel's back._

"That's not a good enough reason," she implored. "There's always - " 

Hope, she'd wanted to say hope, but she couldn't force the word out of her. The message he had tried to convey in the past hour finally hit home, leaving her no energy to fight his decision. She stared at him powerlessly.

She didn't know who made the first move, but her arms wrapped themselves around his bulk and she hugged him. She felt tremors run through him as if the mount-up tension tried to escape all at once, toppling over itself in a struggle to leave his body. He clung to her, shuddering. She rubbed his arms, his head, his back, muttering soothing nothings, while all the time her mind sang that one song: _No diloxin, no diloxin, no diloxin._

Maybe he was right, maybe a swift ending was better than protracted suffering. 

Suddenly she was very tired.

&&&

EPILOGUE

 

She woke with a startled exhale when a finger smoothed over her cheek and gently pushed her hair out of her face.

"What? _What_?!"

Bill crouched down next to her.

"Are you alright?" he asked softly.

She pushed herself upright. A squadron of marines was dispersed in the corridor.

"Jack?" she asked when she let Bill help her up.

Bill looked away. She followed his gaze to the airlock, where Lieutenant Ishay stood in mute shock, the smeared letter in her hands. 

Cottle's clothes still waited in their neatly folded stack next to the sealed hatch, but through the open bay doors Laura saw the stars.

&&&


End file.
